an accounting, 2020 - present
adding machine tape
installation size variable, one column of paper is 72 x 72 x 120 in.
As the Covid-19 pandemic progressed through the summer of 2020, I started thinking about ways I could show the number. I thought about how I could account for the lives lost in the United States to Covid-19, which led me to the idea of hand marking the number of people who had died. The cost would be paper, markers, and time. The type of paper was an important consideration. Adding machine tape became my choice because of its association with accounting and tracking numbers but also because of its long, linear quality.
Another idea that was also important to me to include was that many of the United States deaths were preventable. Fewer people were dying in other parts of the world because less people were becoming infected due to public health initiatives. I was fortunate to find an article that was released in October 2020 that discussed a study that looked at this type of comparison (Redlener, et al. 2020). I used this information and applied it to the daily death toll to show how many deaths could have been prevented by making marks in four different colors. I applied this formula to the death toll for the first full year of the pandemic. In the second year, I have compiled data from the Center for Disease Control to distinguish those that died who were unvaccinated vs. vaccinated.
This accounting paper installation is situated so that the marks are all visible. The strips of paper are arranged in five columns, each of which take up the space of 6 ft by 6 ft and the paper hangs ten feet long. Each column holds twenty rolls of paper, each roll is 150 ft long, divided across five poles with the purpose of a column reading like a memorial, reminiscent of stone monuments. The paper can be moved by the air currents created in the wake of a passerby. I like this interaction of living people with the lifeless strips of paper.
The making of this artwork was livestreamed. See the archive here: https://www.youtube.com/@elizabethkatt5109/streams
installation size variable, one column of paper is 72 x 72 x 120 in.
As the Covid-19 pandemic progressed through the summer of 2020, I started thinking about ways I could show the number. I thought about how I could account for the lives lost in the United States to Covid-19, which led me to the idea of hand marking the number of people who had died. The cost would be paper, markers, and time. The type of paper was an important consideration. Adding machine tape became my choice because of its association with accounting and tracking numbers but also because of its long, linear quality.
Another idea that was also important to me to include was that many of the United States deaths were preventable. Fewer people were dying in other parts of the world because less people were becoming infected due to public health initiatives. I was fortunate to find an article that was released in October 2020 that discussed a study that looked at this type of comparison (Redlener, et al. 2020). I used this information and applied it to the daily death toll to show how many deaths could have been prevented by making marks in four different colors. I applied this formula to the death toll for the first full year of the pandemic. In the second year, I have compiled data from the Center for Disease Control to distinguish those that died who were unvaccinated vs. vaccinated.
This accounting paper installation is situated so that the marks are all visible. The strips of paper are arranged in five columns, each of which take up the space of 6 ft by 6 ft and the paper hangs ten feet long. Each column holds twenty rolls of paper, each roll is 150 ft long, divided across five poles with the purpose of a column reading like a memorial, reminiscent of stone monuments. The paper can be moved by the air currents created in the wake of a passerby. I like this interaction of living people with the lifeless strips of paper.
The making of this artwork was livestreamed. See the archive here: https://www.youtube.com/@elizabethkatt5109/streams
